A Long and Winding Road: The Regulation of Private Native Forestry in New South Wales, Australia

Abstract

is concerned with Private Native Forestry in New South Wales (NSW), Australia. Private native forests comprise indigenous species in a semi-natural formation on privately-owned land. Such forests are usually uneven-aged, and regenerated naturally rather than by sowing or planting. These forests are of major conservation and commercial importance in NSW, covering 8 M ha and comprising one-third of all native forest in the state (Thompson 2007). The management and harvesting of these forests is known as private native forestry (PNF), and has been the focus of public attention for several years, as the desirability and implications of regulating these activities has been debated. Codes of forest practice have been instituted in many countries, especially during the period 1988-1996 (Dykstra and Heinrich 1996a, Turnbull and Vanclay 1999). Environmental guidelines for forest harvesting in Australian forests were published in 1979 (Cameron and Henderson 1979) and throughout the 1980s most Australian States developed codes of forest practices, principally directed at logging or harvesting in public forests (McCormack 1996). In the